The amplification of identification and surveillance technologies by predominantly industrialized states over the past decade is staggering. Particularly in what seems to be the expanding area of border or “Homeland” security, there is a global reconfiguration of sovereign power and the neoliberal market constituted by an emphasis on borders, borderlands, and technological (re)articulations of these spaces and the bodies that traverse them, which I refer to as “Borderworld.” In this brief talk, Dr. Muller will begin to unpack the complex web of ‘new’ security imperatives, the intensification of security, surveillance and identification technologies and the interrelated architecture and design of contemporary borders and borderlands, through the lens of my forthcoming research on “ferocious architecture.”

Since obtaining his PhD from Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, Dr. Muller has published widely in books and academic journals on issues of borders, sovereignty, security, technology and identity, including two monographs: Security, Risk, and the Biometric State: Governing Borders and Bodies (Routledge 2010); and with Samer Abboud, Rethinking Hizballah: Legitimacy, Authority, Violence (Ashgate 2012). Dr. Muller currently teaches Critical Security Studies and International Relations at King’s University College at Western University in London, Ontario, and as of September 2014 he will be the first Visiting Fellow at Confluence: Centre for Creative Inquiry at the University of Arizona in Tucson.